"A Super Rental, But Nothing More"

I have to say I really had high hopes for this game. I looked forward to buying it for about 2 months. Overall I was disappointed by almost every aspect of this game. The game was too easy. It’s as simple as that. I had purchased and enjoyed thoroughly Ocarina Of Time and Link’s Awakening. Both very good games and two of the best games ever made. Link To The Past, a supposedly wonderful game, didn’t even come close to measuring up to my other Zelda games.

What’s with all that griping above? Read below. One Note: This review does not in any way reflect Four Swords at all. It may be a good game. I have never played it. I live out in the middle of Kansas and nobody around me has the game. If/when I do play it, I will update the review.

Story9/10 This part isn’t too bad. A evil wizard named Agahnim has kidnapped princess Zelda,and you must rescue her and on and on. Nothing to overall special, no real plot twists, just enough to give meaning to all the dungeon-busting. The reason it scored an 9 it because of little bits of story given off once you beat the fourth dungeon and every dungeon after that. Then again, don’t expect to have dreams or to catch yourself day-dreaming about it during class. It’s not THAT good.

GamePlay9/10 Nothing to glaring wrong here. Actually it is nearly perfect. All the button are properly configured so it makes sense. Some people may talk about the Pegasus shoes being weird with the R button, but I’ve never played the SNES version so I wouldn’t know. As with some of the other Zelda games, it may seem awkward bringing up your Inventory menu with the Select button and not the Start button, but that’s not something to complain about. It comes about real natural and after about 5 minutes it’ll be second nature. All the items and weapons work very smoothly. Most of them are really fun to use and most of the have a variety of uses when it comes to battling. As you may have been wondering why I took off one point of score... this is why. In the other two Zelda games I have played you could assign a weapon to either the A or B button, and your shield is only up when you’re not using anything. That may add to the challenge but I miss that opportunity for that personal touch to the control settings.. :(

Sound10/10 No this would make a good soundtrack. Very noble overworld music that never gets tiring and cannot become annoying with the exception of a few dungeons’ music. The music add nice touches to Boss victories and enemies make a satisfying sound when defeated. Very cool music is also in Kakario Village which has remained basically the same for years. Gives a real feel for the mood of the game. No complaints here at all.

Challenge7/10 This is where the game really goes down the hole. I started playing this game, and once I got out of the practice level in Hyrule castle I proceeded to go to the first dungeon. I didn’t expect it to be awful hard being the first dungeon and all. Then I easily beat the next dungeon, got a few heartpieces and then beat the third dungeon and got a better sword. It all flew by so fast. I had beaten the first three dungeons in one day. It took about 3 and a half hours to do so. I didn’t get any help on those dungeons at all. It was all me. “It has to get harder on the REAL dungeons!” I thought, trying to be optimistic. Nope not much harder. Sadly the puzzles are easy to figure out with a bit of patience and only until the last three do they require any real thought. During my “prime” time of playing this game I posted some topics of the boards about how easy this game was. The general response was either I played this on the SNES years ago or that I have a guide. Nope, neither of those were true. I have never even had a SNES till 1994 and the game was too easy to bother with a guide. As I mentioned before I have played two other Zelda games. They both were VERY challenging. I still have trouble with some spots up to this day. When I had completed this game two weeks after I had bought it I had used only one tip from a guide. How to beat the fourth boss. There is one plus to the challenge that keeps from scoring a 2/10 are the Bosses. Man they’re hard. Easily the hardest boss ever conceived. This will be the only reason you’ll want to sit out another game. The bosses are all different and they are HARD. I have died so many many times. On my second game file I died 15 times of the second boss. Yes I know, that’s kind of sad, but you’ll agree with me once you’ve tried to beat it. Even the first boss is challenging. To add on top of the bosses hardness is if you die, you’ll have to again travel through the dungeon to get back to the boss, and in some cases, resolve some puzzles.

Replay Value1/10 This is horrible. It entertaining enough to sit through the first game, but there’s not enough challenge to keep you going through the second game. In my opinion, this is almost as important as what the fun level is, and frankly it doesn’t have much of this. It’s almost non-existent. One final word of advice on Replay Value, take the time to get everything on your first and probably only trip, it add more satisfaction to beating the game knowing you’ve done everything, and you might not care about doing it later.

Rent Or Buy? Rent definitely! There’s not enough to constitute the 30 bucks you’ll have to shuck over to buy it. Trying to beat it with a passion, you’ll definitely be able to beat it within a couple rental periods. If you happen to begin on whether or not to buy it, think about it carefully before you do. You might regret, you might not.